Legitimate? What exactly do you mean by legitimate? You trying to say that some of my fears aren’t legit… WELL, we’ll see about that!

P.S. This will be a long post!

FEARS:

1. Spiders (particularly brown):I’ve been afraid of spiders for as long as I can remember and I can think of plenty of incidents that this fear may’ve stemmed from and then been reinforced by. And for those of you who say acrachnophobia is not legitimate then you are freaks (including my step-mum)! A fear of spiders is an inbuilt survival technique that saved our ancestors from being bitten and killed by these villainous creatures! The reason why I specify brown (and this is probably the illegitimate part) is because I have noticed that for some reason the size and shape bears little relevance to the amount of fear a particular spider will induce on me. However, the colour has a big effect. I’ve noticed often that black spiders I find an easier feat to kill than even attempting to go near a brown or brightly coloured one. This, I strongly believe, has eventuated from the experiences I’ve had with them. Here’s just a few. When I was 4 and my sister was 7 we decided to spend a night sleeping out in our wooden cubby house that my dad built for us on the berry farm. Of course, like the wise young women we were we asked my dad to kindly search the cubby top to bottom for spiders first. We watched from a distance to be sure the job was done properly, and behold! He found no less than than FOUR hairy brown huntsman spiders, 2 of which were caught mating at the scene. Satisfied that the grand 1.5m x 1.5m cubby had been cleansed of all vermin we adventurously dragged our sleeping bags out to it, along with a torch and several packets of lollies. Once dinner was over and we had said our farewells to our parents we climbed into the cubby. After a good deal of story-telling and gobbling of sweets we decided to finally sleep and turned off the torch. The moonlight beamed in through the door-less hut and shone softly upon the walls and I stared at if for a while trying to calm my excitement over our adventure so I could go to sleep…. But fate did not smile kindly upon us that night. As I lay there a monstrous shadow slowly interrupted my plain moonlit wall. I jabbed my sister with my elbow and whispered for her to turn the torch on, but she sleepily refused. I asked again and she calmly told me to go to sleep. “TURN.. THE.. TORCH.. ON!” I whispered as angrily as I could and with a jerk of annoyance she grabbed the torch and switched it on. It’s bright yellow beam lit up the wall in question and there upon it was an enormous hairy brown huntsman, it’s eyes gleaming in the bright light and its elongated shadow further exaggerating its gigantic proportions. We both let out synchronised screams, squirming frantically out of our sleeping bags and leaping from the cubby. We ran pushing and shoving bare-foot across the damp earth our screams continuing to pierce the night. Heaving the door of our cottage home open, we ran into our shock-faced parents arms, shaking and panting.

This is a photo of Laura and I at the time the above event occurred. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a photo of our famous old cubby on my laptop.

I could also tell you of my other spider encounters like at the when we lived in a tin shed infested with spiders and bugs of all kinds, not to mention surrounded by various deadly snakes. Or the time when I was running down hill through a row in the our fruit orchard and stopped just in the nick of time with my face just inches from a huge spider web stretching across the expanse between the two rows of fruit trees with a long, thin-legged Golden Orb Spider. But I’ll save the details of those fearful stories for another time and now go onto my second fear.

2. Car Accidents (especially involving children):As a Nanny, it’s an important (and scary) part of my job to drive other peoples’ children around. Of course I have good booster seats and I try to be as careful as possible. But as a P-Plater I am aware that I don’t have as much driving experience as most people on the road. But that’s not the only problem, even some of the most “experienced” drivers zoom around like they own the bloody roads. Being in a car accident myself would be bad enough and hurting or injuring my own (future) kids would be terrible too. But Hurting or even killing someone else’s kids! My God I don’t think I’d ever get over the guilt! When I first started working as a Nanny I was positively terrified. The entire first week I had nightmares about the many and various ways I could accidentally kill them… or them being killed while under my supervision. Everything from jumping out of windows, falling down stairs, not cooking the chicken and giving them a deadly dose of salmonella poisoning, slipping on the tiles, hit by a car as they cross the road, hit by a tram, hopping on the tram and me not getting on in time and then a kidnapper taking them etc etc. Most of these irrational fears dulled after the first few weeks of looking after them. I guess I became more confident in my own ability to look after them but the one fear that still scares me is killing/hurting them in a car accident while I’m driving. You are never in full control while you are driving because at any moment some idiot drunken, high or just stupid could come flying out of no where and ruin your life or even end it completely.

3. Eating entirely healthy:As some of you may’ve read in my I am currently doing Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation to try lose a bit of weight and to tone up. As I’ve also said previously, it officially starts on August 12 but it’s currently pre-season and we’re up to Task 5 which is doing a Kitchen Make-Over; getting rid of all the bad food and only having healthy food. But my mum always said, as well as the Swiss family I now live with say “everything in moderation”. I can’t eat entirely healthy like the program tells me to… correction, I don’t WANT to.

Of course I could have written that I’m afraid of serious illness, torture and rape, but who isn’t? And the thought sickens me so I don’t want to write about it now. Surprisingly I’m not really that afraid of death. I’m saddened by it because I want to be on this earth and I am afraid of what the means of my death may be but I’m guessing that will fall under illness or torture. The death itself, the idea of dying I’m not afraid of because I will either be not aware of it if you think about it purely scientifically, or I will go to another world or a heaven (depending on your religious views), I’m not afraid of hell because I don’t think any decent God can say I’ve done anything terrible enough to deserve it.